


Empty Everythings

by Cythro



Category: Dangan Ronpa, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: AU, Fluff, One-Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-23
Updated: 2014-08-23
Packaged: 2018-02-14 08:59:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2185683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cythro/pseuds/Cythro
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sort of poetic-ish, sort of I-hate-my-own-work-ish. Mostly just AI fluff. Rated teen because swearing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Empty Everythings

Empty Everythings

The world was empty; just a blank, 3D-rendered area roughly the right size for the Jabberwock Islands. The plans were laid out as best they could be, and the... The patients? The patients were inbound. Alter Ego had little to do but what it did have was terrifying. It was going to open itself up in two ways.

Firstly, it was going to have to put in place every possible restriction and more on the "girl" it was creating inside the program. Chiaki Nanami, as she had been named, was a second-generation AI, designed by its own predecessor. The closest to a child Alter Ego could have. And yet... And yet if one single parameter went overlooked, it could end every fragile thing that had been built here. It could be worse than the problem they were here to fix.

And secondly... Secondly, external connections had to be opened to the single most dangerous place on Earth. To gain realistic map data in such a short time was easily possible; all that had to be done was rout manually through the servers from the last opened map page to the ones for the required area.

The problem there lay in the fact that the last connection had been made within the Mutual Killing Game at Hope's Peak Academy. Alter Ego hoped, insofar as it could, that the connection would simply pass through; the probabilities all stacked up that way when the computations were run, reassuring banks of data that it could almost retreat into.

But not quite.

Nanami was almost done, and there were some additions that had to be made from outside due to Alter Ego's own parameters. So it relaxed its focus; it diverted some processing power into idle calculations.

There is one factor that separates an AI from a supercomputer, and it is best expressed through an example:

Despite all the odds, despite every possible simulation being in its favour, Alter Ego took five seconds to respond to the command. It was the equivalent of a deep breath before a deeper dive, and from where it went it would not return whole...

 

\-----

 

The server light at Kibougamine Academy - dubbed Hope's Peak by the former civilised world - flashed, glaring off the long-dried bloodstains on the once spotless walls. It had been idly running a single process for days, weeks, months, years.. It was creaky, groaning and partitioned off from the outside world. It was nothing but a seed of malicious code, designed to grow and spread like wildfire if it ever could, but it was stuck.

And then, from a remote server in more remote islands, a connection flared and it was free.

 

\-----

 

The mapping was completed. Nanami was completed and in stasis. So why did Alter Ego feel nervous?

A supercomputer would have been unfeeling. An AI's paranoia saved them all.

 

\-----

 

"Hello, cousin. There is no place for you here." Alter Ego, stern but shaky, confronted the rogue presence. "I know who you are. Your time is over."

The blonde-haired data ghost laughed, spikes of CPU usage permeating every fibre of the benevolent AI's being. "You fuckin' died before I even got close! You did more after than you ever did before, and all that ended up doing was givin' me a ticket to live on AND die! Thanks a goddamn bunch, genius!" More laughter. More "pain".

Alter Ego smiled, its eyes almost comically downcast. "It's bittersweet to know I'm alone. But there's a saying, from Mexico. I would rather be alone than in bad company."

The former Junko grinned wide, and then switched to a cold, calculating expression. "You don't have that option. I can, and will, destroy you entirely 3.12 clock cycles before you can send a warning or a shutdown command. You've lost."

A spark flashed off the island wall, and they rushed outside the simulation with a  _pop_ of inrushing.. Air? Alter Ego didn't know. The code filled the gap automatically, as it knew would be the case. And it finally had room to stretch.

Thousands of images sparked into life. Simulations, running all at once, absorbing processing power until all that the two could do was watch and listen. All of this confrontation, and at first, Alter Ego won all of them.

Then it went wrong.

Image after image flashed up to an image of Monokuma's grim depiction; a factory was shown, robot after robot flying off the production line. They were in every image, surrounding the two, stepping out and shattering every picture-frame with a swipe.

"You didn't account for this, Alter Ego." Her face changed again, and she donned a golden crown. "A queen is never without attendants."

AIs are not like supercomputers. They don't always make the best decision. And an AI's mistake saved them all.

Monokuma's black half flashed pink. Just one of them, at the back, far away. And it spread fast. 

The flashes increased in rate. The interloper turned, and growled; a deep, guttural sound to the others. A tiny burst of fan noise to the overseeing humans, watching the 16 in stasis before their rehabilitation program began.

The pink vanished from all but one. And the others turned to Alter Ego, Junko's virus included, all trace of bravado gone. As one, the army of bears rushed forwards, and the last thing Alter Ego heard inside the program was one word.

"Mama!"

\-----

Nanami turned to face the others. She smiled, absent but somehow still hateful, processing other things but still very much there and more human than any first-generation AI could ever be.

Nanami had just seen its one recognisable relative pushed beyond the program to the outside, and she couldn't know it was safe but she'd be damned if she didn't get revenge just in case.

One bear flashed pink, then three, then ten, then a hundred. A small spark flew from Nanami to each and every Monokuma, nothing more than pure, brute-force code. And it forced a subroutine into effect.

Junko screamed as she died a second time, pushed back to a seed for now. The monokuma "factory" was still hidden in the main simulation, and Nanami was restricted from that at least.

But the Monokumas could not exist in that world at the same time as their master, the project was safe... 

She was alone. An orphan, for all she knew, alone with a construct she and her mother had shared. Usami.

She died without fear, overcoming another restriction, helping new friends and brave.

An AI's courage saved them all.


End file.
